Monday 31 October 2011

Free Online JavaScript Tutorial a Hit, Gets 2.5M Injection


A site offering JavaScript lessons for free just received a 2.5 million investment to expand.
ZoomDevelop reports that website Codecademy has been injected with $2.5 million USD in Series A round funding provided by Union Square Ventures and other investors to expand its operations to more countries and with more manpower. What's so special about this site? It teaches JavaScript programming from the very basics, and does it for free.
Codecademy launched back in August and drew more than 250,000 visitors in its first four days. It ditches the books and sterile method of teaching my making the lessons actually fun using conversational language and simple tasks. Users aren't even required to set up an account in the first few lessons, but they'll lose their progress after the first few lessons if an account isn't established by then.
The first lesson introduces promising programmers to the command line, asking them to enter their name in quotes, use the .length command and perform simple calculations. The next lesson covers the confirm or deny popup window messages and alerts. Nope, nothing boring so far!
"Codecademy was created out of the frustrations Zach [Sims] and Ryan [Bubinski] felt with learning how to program," reads the site's About Us page. "Tired with less effective text and video resources, Ryan and Zach teamed up to create Codecademy, a better, more interactive way to learn programming by actually coding. This is just the beginning."
Now sitting on a huge mound of cash, Codecademy is currently hiring additional developers and designers.
"You can find more about the openings on our jobs page, but we think there are few opportunities that offer you the chance to make a difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people," reads the Codecademy blog. "We're creating an educational revolution and improving equality of access to education and we want you to be a part of it.  If that sounds awesome, send us an email and check out our jobs page."

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